A Stag And Doe
by ThisIsJayKay
Summary: Lily and James in a nutshell.


**Author's Note:** _Written for the amazing _unspeakable49_. Happy belated birthday, Sana!_

_Edited as of September 13, '13._

* * *

**i. First Year**

"Hey! Evans!" A familiar voice came drifting over to Lily's ears as she hurried up the Charms corridor. She contemplated whether or not to stop and let Potter speak - he was always riling her up, so why should she just let him go ahead and do it again merely so he could get a kick out of it?

"Evans! Wait up!"

_Let me just get this over with_. Lily whirled around. "What is it, Potter?" she said, trying to sound as pleasant as possible. Potter might be infuriating, but she wasn't going to let that get to her and be rude to him without provocation.

Potter flashed her a big grin as he caught up with her, his hand automatically shooting for his hair. "I just wanted to ask you something."

Lily frowned; she felt irritated by that habit of his - it made her feel weird. In what way, she couldn't figure out. "Yeah?" She glanced at her watch. "Better hurry, Potter. I don't want to be late for Charms."

"Yeah, yeah, I have to go there too, you know. But d'you see me worrying about it? No, 'cause it's not that big a deal. Anyway, Evans, I was talking to Sirius, right, and he said Snivellus knows a bit too much about the Dark Arts to be normal, and I was just wondering - why're you friends with him, anyway?"

Lily gritted her teeth and tightened her grip on the strap of her satchel. _Without provocation, my arse. _"How many _times_," she hissed, all thoughts of being civil flying out of her head as the irritation kicked in, "have we gone through this before? His name is Sev, and he's my best friend because he doesn't possess a big head and neither does he think it's his life's goal to waste every moment by pranking and making fun of people. As for the Dark Arts, he's just very well-read. Happy?"

"No," Potter replied. Lily was surprised to see that he was quite serious. She didn't have time for that, though, so she opened her mouth to tell him to leave her alone but, as per usual, he beat her to it. "No, Evans, I'm not happy. Because I'm telling you, that git's not good for you."

"Not good for me?" Lily glared at Potter. "_Not good for me?_ And what exactly," she said, bringing her wand out and lightly twirling it (just so he got the hint), "do you mean to imply by that?"_  
_

Potter raised his hands, clearly surrendering to Lily's insinuated threat. "Look, I'm sorry, Evans! I just meant that - well -"

Lily had had enough. "Save it, Potter." And with that she spun around and strode to the Charms classroom, wondering who had invented the concept of arrogant toerags and prats who thought they ruled the world.

* * *

**ii. Second Year**

"Evening, Evans."

Lily looked up to see Potter planting himself in the chair opposite her. She sighed and looked around the library as if hoping for a source of patience. Finally she settled her gaze on the grinning boy in front of her.

"You're looking like the Cheshire Cat."

Potter's grin faltered: he obviously thought she was insulting him. _Good_, Lily thought. "The what?" he queried, surprised.

"I know you're a pureblood, Potter, and haven't been exposed to Muggle literature, but don't tell me you've not heard of the Cheshire Cat."

"I've heard of it, then."

Lily sighed again. "Oh, for heaven's sake. The Cheshire Cat is a cat, Potter."

"Funny, that."

Lily ignored him. "It grins a lot."

"Ah, that explains it. And there I was thinking that you'd called me a nasty name." Potter's hand reached up to his head to mess up the mop of hair sitting atop it.

Lily rolled her eyes and returned to her History of Magic essay. If Potter had been in possession of a couple of brain cells, he'd have taken that as a cue to leave. However, he was far from being intelligent (apart from when he was scoring top marks in his classes) and so he stayed firmly rooted in his chair. He even got as far as to fish around in his satchel and pull out a worn textbook, a few sheets of parchment and a battered quill that looked like it had fought battles that had occurred half a century ago.

"Mind if I share your inkwell?"

Lily looked up. She'd been intending to stay out in the library until she'd finished her essay and not be tempted by distractions such as the thought of a snack from the house-elves and the familiar head of Remus Lupin peeking out from behind the shelves (the poor boy would be traumatised if he knew she had a crush on him) but now it was clear that _no distractions _wasn't part of the deal.

"All right, fine. Just don't disturb me."

Lily fell to working on her essay again, surprised that no sound had come from Potter. He was doing (or trying to, anyway, if his intermittently ejaculated swears were any clue) his homework without the need to spout tosh every two seconds - something which probably sat up there on his list of basic life processes needed to carry out in order to sustain a healthy living. _I guess we all have our lucky days_.

"Evans?"

_Or not._ "What?"

"How'd you like our most recent prank?"

"You mean the one that involved lots of candles being arranged to float on top of the Slytherin table and say 'Don't look at us like that, we know we're losers'? One, Potter, that was lame. Very lame. And two, it was mean. _Very_ mean."

"That hurt, Evans. I was expecting lots of praise."

"Yeah, right," Lily retorted, scratching out a sentence she had bungled up in her annoyance at Potter. She'd written _The pureblood families of the early eighteenth century were rolling in pots of gold_, only she'd written _Potters_ instead of _pots_. Stupid prick. "Because I spend every nanosecond of my life breathing well-done-Potter's and neat-work's and words of congratulations and adoration down your neck."

Potter's dramatic sigh and "Oh, how I wish," made her wonder what she had done to deserve this pesky boy under her skin.

* * *

**iii. Third Year**

Potter slid on the bench next to Lily and shot her a lop-sided smile."My emerald-eyed Evans, did you know that your hair, although breath-taking and beautiful, reminds Sirius of his Great-Aunt Cassiopeia's carrot cake?" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Which, by the way, has been rumoured to cause food poisoning."

Lily was used to Potter's idiosyncrasies by now. She'd learned from a very excited Marlene that he fancied her, a fact which probably triggered his desire to drive her up the wall every time she came into his peripheral range. _Good for him,_ she thought sarcastically. _He fancies me, he's basically arranging his own funeral._

It couldn't be denied that there was any truth in that statement.

Just because she disliked him immensely did not mean that she was going to sit and stew away without replying and making him regret his decision of informing her about Merlin knew which relative's Merlin knew what flavoured cake.

"I might want a piece of that cake, Potter. Sounds absolutely brilliant. Just the thing I need to complete my How To Kill James Potter plan with a flourish. Imagine what the papers would say ... _Teenager killed due to clever strategies of object of affections using a slice of __confectionery_ ..."

"You have a gruesome mind, Evans. And I'm not sure cakes can be categorised under confectionery items."

"Fine, then. Slice of dessert."

"That sounds even more pathetic. I think I'd prefer confectionery after all."

Lily smirked in self-satisfaction. "I thought so, too."

* * *

**iv. Fourth Year**

"Ah, there you are, Evans!"

"Here we go again," Lily said under her breath. She raised her voice and looked at Potter. "What is it you want _now?_"

"Well, generally speaking, I'd like a kiss -" Potter ignored Lily's hiss "- but I don't think that's something you want to do at the moment, given that - er - you don't think very highly of me."

"You think right," Lily growled. "What d'you want, _not_ generally speaking?"

"Help." The words were hardly out of Potter's mouth when Lily stared at him.

"_What?_"

Because James Potter never asked for help. This was something so out-of-the-world, so alien, that Lily forgot all she had to say.

"You heard me. Help. I need help."

"Help?" she repeated incredulously and a little faintly.

"Help," Potter confirmed. "What are you on, a repeating spree or something? I need help, Evans, on my Charms essay and I figured, well, since you're the best in our year at Charms and all ..." He fingered his wand nervously.

"Fine," Lily succumbed. "Show me your essay. What you've written so far, I mean."

Potter dove a hand in his bag and produced a dog-eared piece of parchment. "Here."

Lily took it from him, eyeing him with an appraising look in her eyes, prepared to correct a dozen mistakes. What she hadn't readied herself for, however, was the distinguishing scrawl that spread all over the parchment, spelling out in large letters, _You're pretty fit, Evans_._  
_

Moments later a shriek that all the inhabitants of Hogwarts complained blasted their eardrums reverberated throughout the castle.

"_POTTER!_"

* * *

**v. Fifth Year**

"Hey."

"Go away."

"I won't until you forgive me."

"I'm not talking to you."

"You're doing a very good job of it."

"Don't be so mean." Evans raised her head from her arms to reveal a tear-stained face, puffy eyes and an abnormally red nose.

"You look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," James commented, before he could stop himself. _Shit, you prat, why in the name of Merlin's bloody broomstick did you have to go and do something like that for? _he reprimanded himself.

Evans stared at him - probably wondering where he'd picked that popular piece of Muggle culture from - then resorted to a weary "Leave me alone." James cast the dusty floor of the abandoned classroom a none-too-flattering glance and sat down next to Evans. "I'm an arse."

"A big one," the redhead ascertained.

"A huger-than-anything one," James agreed. There was a silence. Then - "I'm sorry, Evans."

"You should be."

"I'm _really_ sorry, Evans. It was partly Sniv- Snape's fault, but I had a hand in it as well."

Evans made no move to defend or further accuse her former friend. James hardly felt what you could call _reassured_, but he took the plunge anyway.

"Evans, it was nasty of me to - to - _belittle_ him and all, and I shouldn't've - I mean, you -" James scratched his neck in confusion, his brain whizzing along at a right speed, trying to think of all the things that were cooped up in him and all the things he wanted to say to Lily and everything, _everything_, that he'd felt the need to tell her since that day in Hogsmeade he'd realised -

"I know what you're trying to say, Potter," came Evans's voice from the depths of the pit her arms made, encircling her head. It was gentler than before and hoarse from crying, and James felt a heap of guilt and a spark of hope stirring in his chest at the same time. "I know. But I really, _really_ don't need this right now."

"Yeah," James found himself saying. He nodded uncomfortably, gazing at Evans, who had raised her head again. His throat was suddenly dry and he was struck by how beautiful she looked even when she was crying. "Yeah, OK." There was a small pause before he added, "I guess I'll leave you to it, then. Just -" he hesitated "- just make sure you ... you don't let all this get to you. A lot, I mean," he hastily rectified, as Evans stared at him sceptically. She nodded at him. He stood up and brushed the dust off his pants. "See you around, Evans."

And the small ghost of a smile that she gave him was enough to make him retire to his dormitory with a new-found spring in his step and a whistle on his lips.

* * *

**vi. Sixth Year**

Lily felt that something was wrong, and James Potter was part of it.

It wasn't that he wasn't asking her out at every possible interval. It wasn't that he'd stopped hexing any Slytherin who dared to cheek him. It wasn't that he'd grown slightly more sober, more _dignified_ than before.

Well, all right. Maybe it was. But how could it be possible, really? Potter was still the Potter of yore, joking and messing around with his mates, but something was different about him. Now exactly _what_ that something different was, Lily didn't know, but she felt intrigued and was determined to figure it out if it was the last thing she did.

All thoughts of Potter and his uncanny behavior flew out of Lily's mind one Saturday, when her owl dropped a letter addressed to her on her lap. She opened it, her eyes skimming through the paper, gave an anguished moan and fled from the Great Hall.

It was in an underused corridor that Potter found Lily sobbing quietly, the piece of paper still clutched in her hands as if her life depended on it. It was partly soaked with tears.

"Evans?" Potter hurried over to Lily's side and knelt down beside her. "Evans, what's wrong?"

Lily didn't reply; she merely shook her head, tears still streaming down her face, her body racked with grief and pain. Potter gently slid the paper out of her grip and quickly read it. When he finished, he put an arm around Lily. "Evans, I'm really sorry," he said softly. Out of impulse, Lily buried her head in his neck and sobbed even more wildly. Potter squeezed her shoulders and let her weep out her agony and all that had happened to her in one long crying jag.

* * *

**vii. Seventh Year**

"It's strange, isn't it?" Lily said from her position near the window, watching the sun set. Streaks of pink and gold shot through the sky, weaving and interlocking like strands of ribbon. "Seems just like a couple of months ago I came to this place for the first time."

James nodded. "Yeah, tell me about it." He paused. "At least I finally got you to go out with me."

Lily laughed and came over to sit beside James; looping an arm around his neck, she leaned over to kiss him. But since when had a chaste kiss _not_ evolved into a fully fledged snogging session when it came to James and Lily? Suffice to say, fifteen minutes later James had somehow slid down on the sofa so that he was occupying the whole length of it, while Lily lay on top of him, both kissing like there was no tomorrow.

"Look, I get that the two of you are in love or whatever, but for heaven's sake, don't make babies while we're still at Hogwarts!"

James and Lily broke apart to glare at a smirking Sirius.


End file.
